SMB Research is overdue in producing another one of our occasional, but irregular, “round-the-horn” Taking Stock pieces. The waiting is over, and the summer be damned: there is stuff going on. We can’t bring ourselves to watch the Red Sox every night, or Olympics‘ synchronized diving or synchronized swimming any night. It’s raining too much to go to the beach. So SMB Research is out of excuses. Read, enjoy, and comment. This Taking Stock talks about Eloqua, HostingCon, SoftLayer, ClickSoftware, Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce‘s 2012 Small Business of the Year, and New England Network Associates. For a Taking Stock primer, see “SMB Research debuts…’Taking Stock’”[Read more...]

The Small Business Technology Tour, hosted by the energetic and engaging Ramon Ray came to Boston this week, and SMB Research had an opportunity to sit in to hear what the experts and small businesses are talking about. This Boston event was the 3rd of 5 stops for the 2011 tour, and, like the agendas in the other tour stops (with some minor variations) the Small Business Technology Tour focuses on addressing how small businesses can strategically use technology to grow their businesses. There are technology references and insights mixed in, but the primary focus is on strategies and best practices in the establishing an on-site presence, and then leveraging that with the right marketing, sales and content strategies. Ramon Ray and Laura Leites of Smallbiztechnology.combrought an engaging mix of speakers who in general provided some valuable insights to the enthusiastic audience.

Another day at Interop under our belts, and more opportunities to wander through the exhibit floor and talk to quite a few vendors. This Interop conference has been, perhaps not surprisingly, all about the data center, cloud computing, network management and security, desktop and server virtualization, unified communications, and wireless / mobile strategy, with more minor focuses on WANs and WAN optimization, social media, voice and video, backup and storage. This diversity is seen on the exhibit floor as well, and is both Interop’s attraction as well as a challenge.

On our Day 1 at Interop New York 2011 (actually the 3rd day of the conference), SMB Research arrived to find the event well in swing, with a lot of enthusiastic attendees, and the exhibit hall of more than 150 exhibitors very full, and very busy.

SMB Research is monitoring developments from Oracle OpenWorld 2011 with great interest. Are you a Mid-market or SMB headed to Oracle OpenWorld? Are you evaluating Oracle for the first time, or further integrating an Oracle solution or technology into your enterprise? Let us know what you think of Oracle’s strategy and technology and what questions/concerns you have. Here below are a few of the things we are watching, with plans to refresh our assessment of Oracle for you in the near future.

TIBCO‘s TUCON® 2011 which started this morning in Las Vegas should be fun to watch. TIBCO likes to call itself the platform for events, with a value proposition is all around mining data with an event-driven approach, to enable a company to “do the exact right thing at the exact right moment in time”. In its 3rd quarter results call (transcript courtesy of Seeking Alpha) TIBCO is reporting their 7th consecutive quarter of revenue growth of more than 20%, and earnings per share growth exceeding 30% – and are reporting a 60-70% increase in attendance at this year’s TUCON event.

Interprise Solutions has announced its 2011 Event for August 23-26 at the Mirage Hotel, Las Vegas. This promises to be, we would think, one of the more exciting Interprise events in recent history with release of its 6.0. (We’re working on an overdue review of this solution which Gary Harrison has kindly taken the covers off for us.)

SMB Research attended SPTechCon Boston 2011 this week, and the highlight (as you might infer if you are keeping up the SMB Research Blog) were the exhibitors. We diligently trolled the booths looking for SMB and midmarket stories, and vendors and service providers servicing same.

[This post has been updated June 5, 2011 to correct some errors that an alert reader has pointed out to me.]

OK, granted, it was my own fault for coming to this, a mistake I am not likely to repeat. You go to enough conferences, and sooner or later you make the mistake of thinking that everyone knows how to put on an event that isn’t lame.

We hear so often about Social Media from the technological or strategic viewpoint that I was not quite sure what to expect from the GSMI’s (Global Strategic Management Institute‘s) event, “Social Media: Legal Risks & Strategy”. While many of us are understandably excited about the promise and the opportunity of social media, the legal aspects are ignored at our own peril.

SYSPRO, the long-time private ERP vendor will be presenting on June 8, 2011 in New York City at the Atlantic Design and Manufacturing Show. SYSPRO has been around for more than 30 years, and continually showing up on the evaluation lists of midsize companies, particularly in the food, medical devices, electronics, machinery/equipment and distribution industries, looking for a cost-effective full-featured system. [Read more...]